


I kept it for my own heart

by PJVilar



Series: Our Year Out of Time Universe [3]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Aging, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Love, M/M, OFCs - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-31 15:19:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3982984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PJVilar/pseuds/PJVilar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The future isn’t a straight line. A brief epilogue for the boys and girls of "Our Year Out of Time".</p>
            </blockquote>





	I kept it for my own heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eudaimon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/gifts).



> Doc Bryan's mentioned wife is an OFC of eudaimon's. Title taken from Gaslight Anthem's "Orphans". For my Ruth, and everyone who supported this verse, with so much love.

_Brad_

The future isn’t a straight line. Nate still takes no particular interest in Parminder’s gene pool being half his, but, eventually, it pleases Brad no end. Kind of like the idea that bits and pieces of his own strange makeup are continuing on in Minnesota via two birth brothers. Brad’s glad he’s not the one doing the heavy lifting, raising kids. It was hard enough to kick a handful of the most fucked-up ones back onto the path and up the hill. 

Bravo2 is still standing, from what he hears. Costa Rica rocks him in her waters during the day and the breeze flows through their bedroom and rustles the night to life. They brush against each other still. Not young. Not needing to be.

_Ray_

Walt is eighteen years sober when his heart problems start. Ray’s life has remained pretty consistent, so Walt’s problems start with a bang -- a heart attack while they’re in the World’s Wonderful Wonderwheel at Coney Island for Fourth of July. It’s a combination of things he learned from Bravo2 and things he learned in the Corps that keep his hands and eyes alert and working to keep Walt tethered fast to this life until they’re freed from the wire cage and the EMTs come running up the boardwalk.

“Just won’t let me go, will ya?” Walt asks, from a hospital bed and on Ray’s new leather sofa and in the car driving down to Virginia for Christmas. 

“No fucking way, dipshit,” Ray says. He spends the better part of his life saying that. It’s four words instead of three, and the times they’re apart are still many. But it works. For a nice, long time that he never expected to even have a chance at, it works.

 _Nate_

The first bloom is Brad. What surprises Nate is how many flowers grow in the wake of that first choice, to paint a living love on his belly amid the butterflies that ascend to Heaven on his arms. First it’s Brad, then Parminder, then Murphy. His parents while they’re still alive. Christie follows, then Jill’s children. His stomach and his back become a wildflower field, a seed-bombed lot of petal and root. 

Nate’s still in good shape and if the locals think the old man drowned in ink is a bizarre sight on the beach, well, either they don’t make it obvious or Nate just doesn’t notice that shit to begin with. The last bloom, as it turns out, is also Brad, unrooting Nate into new adventures around the world and finally settling, as much as they ever settle, in South America. There’s poetry and teaching, and lots of travel, there’s late nights around a fire pit. There’s love, still, right up to the end.

_Parminder_

Going back is always a little wonderful and a little awful. Both are amplified this time around, when Parminder drags the iron gate open and enters the Bravo2 Community Garden for Tony Espera’s funeral reception. 

You can’t ever go home again, but somehow she keeps doing it. Most of the Bravo2 originals are gone. Just Doc and Shar still live here, and Jonah, Maria’s son, who had his first birthday in this same garden before Parminder was even born.

They’re there and so are some other faces familiar from her childhood, her teenage years, those two years in her early thirties when she was sure she wouldn’t make it out alive and Brad gave her his apartment, the one he never really lived in. Her mom doesn’t make it there. Christie’s in Marin County now, unable to cope well with loss or cooler weather. Parminder can’t get angry about it at this point. It’s just who she is. 

The garden is still going strong and it’s crazier than ever. Air plants grow out of old paint cans that run up the brick wall. Medicinal marijuana and mushrooms have a well-marked corner now, legal and well used. There are sunflowers and vegetables just like always, but in neater rows with bigger yields. Irises grow out of big plastic tubs, a tradition without an origin that anyone can recall.

Tony’s art is still on the front door, kept clean and revitalized with new paint by the residents and, probably, by the street artists he’s inspired, maybe even some of the many artists he gave a home at Espera Artists. 

Gina’s there, Doc and Shah. Some bikers, not the bad boys she grew up flirting with and sleeping with but a whole new crop, here to pay their respects. 

Antonio Espera. Poke 237. Boriqua. Nuyorican. Community Leader. Artist. Mentor. Friend. Husband. Father. Brother. 

Bravo2. 

_Forever_

You want to know the end, I know. But you already know the end. Let’s be reasonable here: all religious aspects aside, death is the final chapter in any story taking place in the here and now. Even the four-tendriled helix I’ve gone and twisted out of time. But this story still counts. You know what matters; I know you do.


End file.
